Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency conference report, dated October 1995, contains the proceedings of a conference on ethnic conflict held 30 September to 1 October 1993. The CIA's Geographic Resources Division sponsored it. Academic geographers, anthropologists and US Government officials presented papers on ethnic and territorial conflict in Eastern Europe, Western Europe, the former Soviet Union, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and South Asia. They also discussed what these conflicts mean for US policy. The document contains no UFO material.
“Nevers”25 pages
COO123268 Finally, the major concern the Lebanese currently The Turks see themselves as living in a unitary state, a have is the 300,000 Palestinian refugees who are in nation-state. They know a lot of diversity exists in the the southern part of their country. They would like to country, but they have not allowed allow citizenship to see them moved out. This is another of the destabiliz- be defined in reference to anything other than Turkish ing aspects of the human geography of the Middle identity. East. QUESTION: Do you think that there will be an alien- ation of those Kurds who have been integrated into General Discussion Turkish society, particularly within the military and the intelligence services? QUESTION: I'd like to focus Xhe Kurdish question on Turkey. What do you think the prospects are for DR. MIKESELL: Turkey has used military conscrip- Turks-who seem adamantly ppposed to any kind of tion as a way of promoting national identity, and, acknowledgment of the Kurds. at all-to ever try to when a Kurd is drafted into the army, he gets shipped solve the Kurdish problem politically or socially away from Kurdistan. The Turks have used military rather than just militarily? Is this insurgency ever service and crash programs in literacy to try to Turkify going to end? the non-Turkish population. It would be very difficult to find out how much assimilation has taken place, DR. MIKESELL: The recent statements from Prime however, because Turks are so sensitive to this issue. Minister Ciller simply reinforce what has been said Regardless, I can't imagine an assimilated Kurd who before. When asked about this, she said, "Why is there has changed his name and who knows Turkish going a problem? The Kurds have the same rights as all back to being a Kurdish nationalist. other Turkish citizens." In other words, the Turks are quite emphatic in the idea that, although they recog- nize they have minorities, they cannot have minority citizenship. There is a Kurdish party represented in the parliament in Ankara. When the delegates arrived and wanted to use the Kurdish language, however, they were accused of treason and violation of law, 107
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 205 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.